How to handle a Crab

I don't have any photos loaded on our new computer that I am using to write this blog so I am including a video of "How to Handle a Blue Crab". We made this video back in the Chesapeake bay before we left Maryland but I had no way to publish it on our old computer.

I should mention that our dear friends, Jim and Vicki O'Neil, who we visited at Christmas, gave us a new camera to replace our broken one--It's that Southern hospitality again. We bought this new ACER computer in Brunswick but promptly spilled a scotch on it and it has been confused and recalcitrant ever since. It refuses to load any pictures because it refuses to find the drivers I need to run the software to transfer photos.

It's getting more like me every day. I named it Hal. "I'm afraid I can't do that Max", it says in a soft voice when I try to load my new software that will let me relax on the boat and reach the WiFi router which is mounted in the laundry room. So Hal and I are writing this blog in the laundry room. "How about another scotch," I say to Hal in a mockingly soft voice. Silence. Ha! I thought so!

We rented a car for a week so that we could celebrate our 12th anniversary by car instead of on foot. We reserved a room (for free, thanks to our friends at American Express) at the Hampton Inn in Islamorada 30 miles north of here. We had a suite with separate king bedroom, a full kitchen, and a balcony overlooking the sea. The hotel had a large pool, whirlpool, tiki bar, sand beach, and an Outback Steakhouse restaurant. Instead of spending a fortune on dinner, we decided to grab some carryout from the restaurant and dine while watching the sunset sky.

On the way back to our marina the next day, we stopped at Lorelei Waterside bar and met a fellow who told us about the tarpon (large silvery fish) that congregate at Robbie's Marina on Lower Matcumbe Key. For a few bucks, Robbie's staff give you a pale of fish to feed the tarpon which snap the fish from you with the same speed that an alligator might snap your arm off. They are harmless, though, and some brave souls hold the bait underwater and allow the tarpon, who don't know where the food ends and your hand begins, to try to swallow most of their arm. So we went there and fed some tarpon but I wasn't brave enough to stick my hand deep into the water.

I forgot to take the camera battery along on our trip so I have no photos of all of this. But we plan to rent a car again in a few weeks and maybe I'll get some pictures of Robbie's and of the Hampton. I hope the video works for you.

We've been here over a week at Banana Bay Marina in Marathon Florida and are settling into a routine. We watch "Let's Make A Deal" with Wayne Brady at 10:00 am. Then we walk to Hurricane Restaurant next door for lunch for one of their daily specials. Then we walk and walk and walk.

Tranquility Bay Resort is about a mile west of here and has a neat but pricey Tiki Bar by the water. The West Marine store is a little further. Our 30 year old heater finally died and yesterday we had to walk to West Marine for a new one. Along the way is Daffy Doug's Dollar Store. We can't pass up a dollar store. Also, on the way back to our boat, we stop at Annette's Lobster House--our local favorite--or we might stop at the Sunset Bar that overlooks Florida Bay's spectacular sunsets.

Annette's takes us back in time to when Florida roadside bars and restaurants felt warm and homey. In the lower Keys, most bars feel cool (as in cool, baby) and homo-y (as in gay--not that there is anything wrong with that). Annette's bar has soft lighting and a salt water fish tank whose occupants hypnotize us as we sip our drinks.

East of here is shopping. A K-Mart, Publix Grocery Store, Liquor Store, and a CVS Drug Store are less than a mile away. The Dockside Bar and Grill is about a mile-long walk east then south off of US1 to the south side of Boot Key Harbor. We used to trailer our old 26 foot sailboat to the Dockside and pull into a slip for a week or two. Many of the friends we made on previous trips are still hanging around or working there.

Of course we go to the pool almost every day for a few hours. They also have a poolside Tiki bar. We especially enjoy evenings in the hot tub. We meet people from all over the country and Canada (eh?). Most of them are staying in the hotel and they all have a mission in the Keys. One young couple wants to dive with a whale, another couple wants to buy a boat and wander the marina looking at the different types. Two muscular fellows had rented motorcycles and were roaming the Keys as biker-dudes (Y-M-C-A?). A country-fried family are here to enjoy each other's company for a week at the expense of poor grandpa (You should hear the cussin').
We've had a massive fish kill here in the Keys. The fish of warmer climates aren't equipped to withstand deep hypothermia. Their muscles quit, they stop moving, they stop respirating, then roll belly up. I didn't take pictures of the poor little critters but I did shoot some of the local greenery. The photos above are from here at Banana Bay and surrounding waters. The small island is called Pretty Joe Rock. It has a cottage with a boat ready to go. You can rent it if you have the cash.

Endless Summer--or Endless November

The temperature yesterday morning in Cold Bay, Alaska was higher than in Pensacola, Florida. The jet stream, which dictates how far south the arctic blast can meander, has parked itself over the Straits of Florida. For the past several days, we have awoken to temperatures in the 30s and 40s with wind chills in the 20s and 30s.

On the bright side, because of the colder weather we have the waterways to ourselves. Florida boaters are hunkered down warming their hands over their laptops and cell phones. Other snowbirds like us, who plow down the ICW to the Keys and the Bahamas are all already positioned at their destinations.

Another good side of colder and windier days is that the bugs that so fiercely attack Mandy are unable to navigate in the high winds. She is safe for awhile. We hope not to repeat the vicious attack she suffered back in Harbortown Marina just before Christmas. I counted 50 weeping welts just on one leg. She probably had three hundred or more over her whole body. These are the notorious "no-see-ums" which resemble tiny gnats (they are visible) and inject an anticoagulant which allows for better extraction of body fluids from its victims. Mandy reacts badly to these injections.

Another bright side is that the skies are sunny and bright. The pictures above look as if they were taken on a balmy warm afternoon. In fact, they were all taken in temperatures in the 50s. In our minds, we created expectations of warm sunny days in the Florida Keys. The days have been sunny---just not warm. The Keys and lower Florida are as beautiful as ever---just not warm.

Yesterday, we reached our destination at Banana Bay Marina in Marathon, Florida in the Keys. But each morning over the past week began with our daily ritual of bundling up. I personally put on a thermal shirt and pants covered by a T-shirt, a denim shirt, a sweatshirt, another sweatshirt, and topped off with foul weather jacket. Mandy dresses similarly. If we were home in Columbus, I would wear fewer clothes to go shovel snow. After an hour of shoveling I would sit by the fire to warm up. But open cockpit boats don't drive themselves and once the anchor is weighed and we are underway I remain at the helm for six to eight hours dressed like a "Tick about to Pop" like Christmas Story Randy.

I'm not whining. It's just facts folks! It's great to be here. We have seen pods of dolphin playing around our boat, thirsty manatees drinking fresh water from a hose, an eight foot shark (OK three foot!!)and more species of birds than we recognize. It's great to see the tropical fauna and flora again. Coconuts and palm fronds float by the boat. Outside, a banana wind is blowing. That's a wind just strong enough to blow bananas from the banana trees. Maybe we'll score some fresh bananas today.

And the cold weather keeps people hiding out in the bars and we are fortunate to meet them. In Miami, we taxied to a liquor store--the kind with a sleazy lounge attached. We did our "walk down a street and turn into a bar" magic trick and found ourselves transported back in time to when drinking was a sport. The bar, named Happy's Stork Lounge" is the third oldest in Miami. Built about 1950, the lounge once had a neighboring bar owned by Dean Martin. Deano's bar entertained a tough crown who sometime spilled over into Happy's. Two bullet holes grace the walls of Happy's Lounge--the result of an unknown dispute of some thugs who frequented Deano's. The holes penetrated a hand painted mural which the bartender, Tanacy, says was painted about the time the bar was built. The mural of bar patrons drinking and couples flirting wraps around two walls of the bar. It's a little dark and faded but provides the mood of the bar's history.

Tanacy, a scotsman, told about his recent boating experience. "I got droonk as hell at the marina bah and when I clymbed down the laadder to my friend's boot I got tangled in a roll of gahden hoose he had left on deck. I couldn't figure my way out of the tangle of hoose so I just slept there on deck. When I opened muy euys it was still daak. I thought that I had slept through the night, through the next day and into the next night until I tried to get up and realized that Sampson, (his overfed pitbull who was lying on the floor in the bar) was lying on my head with his balls coovering muy euyes. No woonder it was daak."

The photos above are sailing down Biscayne Bay, looking back at Miami, Boca Chita Key in Biscayne Bay, cormorants in the Keys.

Happy New Year

We spent nine days on Merritt Island with our friends Jim and Vicky. They took us everywhere that we needed to go and out to dinner and for drinks more times than I remember. We had all of the local foods and even our first taste of Vietnamese food--very tasty. Jim and Vicky met many Vietnamese people in Biloxi, MS because many Viets came there to start shrimping. J&V became a fan of their food.

Jim and Vicky saw, in this blog, that our camera had died so they gave us their camera. Southern hospitality has no limits. I haven't installed the software yet so I don't have any photos to present now but I have memories to describe until the photos are ready.

We tied our boat to a slip next to J&V's boat in Harbortown Marina at the end of the most hospitable pier we have experienced so far. We met Chuck, who lives aboard his sailboat with his cat, Mandy. Mandy has free run of the marina and climbs on 'Chablis' (J&V's boat) to eat whatever herbs Vicky might be growing in her pots.
We also met the steel drum musician and his wife on the next pier over. We also met hundreds of birds that rest in the Australian pines across from our slip. We saw dozens of cormorants, pelicans, anhingas, grackles, gulls, terns, martins, and some crows (who travel in murders in the same way that grackles travel in plagues). The cormorants, which we see at home on Hidden Lake, and their cousins the anhingas spread their wings to dry them after a dive to capture fish. It's a stately pose to see.

One day J&V drove us to Grills Bar where the cruise ships depart and where we drank rum with coke and waved to the passengers of the ships as they passed heading out to sea. My oldest son, his wife, and my grand kids went there many times back when he used to live in Florida. Those are great memories.

J&V have involved themselves in a most obscure hobby and shared their passion for it with us. It's a kind of scavenger hunt for retirees, families, and anyone who enjoys a 'hide and seek' challenge. It's called Geocaching and you can read about it at http://www.geocaching.com/. There are hidden caches all over Columbus and the world and one somewhere in Hidden Lakes where we live. Geocaching is a worldwide hobby and many travellers take time from their business trips or sightseeing to hunt for hidden treasure with no more reward than the satisfaction of finding the cache and signing their username on the cache ticket.

We left harbortown Marina on Tuesday, December 29, to continue our progress south. We anchored on Tuesday night at Dragon Point at the southern end of Merritt Island and the next night just north of Vero Beach. On Thursday, we tied up at another Harbortown Marina property in Fort Pierce to have a little New Years Eve fun and to watch the OSU Bucks beat the Oregon Duck-ups today, on new years day. We are also letting a butt-load of rain go by.

The marina bar here harbors many friendly folks such as Dave who says he is a retired cop from Brooklyn New York but has no ID, driver's license, or credible history. But talking to him is like being 'on camera' with a retired vaudeville comedian like Milton Burle, or Mory Amsterdam. His conversation, complete with New York accent, skips from adornment of Mandy's breasts to what a friend ate at a yacht club celebration to his bizarre plan to sail to Barbados with an incompatible friend.

We also met Marvin who just celebrated his 80th birthday. Marv is a WW2 vet who, when yelled at because everyone assumes that he is hard of hearing, yells back at them "because he's not hard of f#@king hearing". He was a reconnaissance pilot in the war and still is pissed because when he was discharged one day short of his 21st birthday, the F*#cking bartender at a Hollywood Florida bar wouldn't serve him a f#*king drink until midnight when he legally turned 21 years of age. "The A--hole," he laments.

Then there's Delna who is a transplant from the Caribbean. When we met her and her beautiful accent on New Years Eve she was smoking her last cigarette ever for the rest of her life. Today she was back in the bar promising to quit after this next pack is gone. We gave her a copy of our book. We plan to return here in the spring and see if my words offered any help. Maybe--Maybe not!! We'll see.

Next entry will have pictures, I hope.

Marv says "Happy F*#king New Year to all of our friends.